


A'Changin

by anamatics



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Coming of Age, Drabble Sequence, Drama, Family, Fluff, Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-24
Updated: 2011-04-23
Packaged: 2017-10-18 14:31:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/189862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anamatics/pseuds/anamatics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kid-fic, I can’t really say much more than that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A'Changin

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Keeper (Agnates in Elysium)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/144927) by [Dee_Laundry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dee_Laundry/pseuds/Dee_Laundry). 



> Written in the spirit of my old challenge, which people are still doing, and it impresses me to no end. Pick a novel (or book), preferably one of more than 100 pages in length, and take the first (full) sentence off of the top of page; 10, 20, 30, 40 & ect. Until you have ten quotes.
> 
> Take said ten quotes and write drabbles based on them. You can use the whole quote, or just a section, even a word – all that matters is that you stay faithful to the first sentence part of the challenge.
> 
> Author’s notes: I like kid!fic an awful lot, but I’ve noticed this rather strange trend in House/Wilson kid!fic. Most their children are boys. (I think I’ve only read one fic by dee_laundry that featured a girl, but I could be imagining that it was Dee that wrote it.) What’s up with that? Is it that no one wants to rain on the parade of Mary-Sue authors everywhere? Or is everyone too afraid of writing a Mary Sue? I honestly don’t really care if this gets MST-ed because of sue-ness or not. It was a fun experiment and a very fun excuse for me to go back to my old copy of The Three Musketeers (certa 1890 or so) by Alexandre Dumas and get some good quotes for you all.

_o1. “In those times panics were common, and but few days passed without some city or other recording in its archives an event of this kind”_  
The days before the birth were a near constant state of panic for both House and Wilson.

House tried to pretend like he wasn’t panicking, but every time one of his fellows came into his office he would start to get to his feet, ready to hurry down the three floors to the maternity ward. The waiting for the baby to come was killing him. Wilson was a little better, he went about his day with the same practiced professionalism that he went about every aspect of his daily life, but he would call Cuddy every hour to make sure she was okay.

Each of them was moving about in their own state of dream, waiting for Cuddy to give birth, waiting to see what the miracle of life would hold for the three of them.

They’d agreed on this a long time ago, giving Cuddy the chance to have her child; and to provide House with a chance to try his hand at fatherhood. Wilson was just along for the ride, as he always was when it came to House.

It was now a long-standing joke between the three of them, trying to deny that Wilson wasn’t part of their little family. Wilson was the glue that held them together; his love for House and his respect for Cuddy was enough to make the two of them realize that while Cuddy could never live with House, the child would have a home.

A home courtesy of one Doctor James Wilson.

It was funny, House realized as he finally moved into the maternity ward after getting the call that it was time, that they didn’t even have a name for their child and yet here they were, starting a family like it was no big deal.

As they watched from the corner of the room, out of the way of the grumpy midwife who had threatened both of them bodily harm if they got in the way; House’s hand unconsciously slipped into Wilson’s. They shared a long look, and House leaned in and kissed him quickly, before the sounds of new life filled the room and the epic debate of what they should name this new girl-child began.

  


x

  


  
_o2. “But before he fainted, he collected all of his strength to challenge you, and defy you while challenging you.”_  
House swore up and down that the little monster that they’d brought into the would not survive her first year of life. He was quite certain that the three of them would not be able to survive a colicky baby who didn’t sleep through the night until well into her tenth month. And yet, somehow, they’d managed to do okay for those first few months – House wasn’t sure that he’d really like to remember what it was like to sleep, to have sex, to keep his normal hours.

It was a strange sensation to be one of the two primary guardians of such a small wonder; and an even stranger sensation to finally be able to sleep after months of reverting back to his medical school schedule of staying awake for close to forty-eight hours before passing out for a carefully controlled amount of time before getting up to do it again.

Life with the child was good now, Cuddy had her on the weekends, House and Wilson took her on the weekdays. The official papers stated that the parents were living separately and shared custody. It was a small lie, but a lie that kept Child Services off their backs.

They'd decided on that schedule because Cuddy realized that she was still married to her job, despite her new commitments to her daughter. She couldn't deal with the day-to-day problems of both a child and a hospital without severely neglecting one. The three of them had decided that it would be better for Cuddy to spend time with her daughter on the weekends; when there weren't as many hospital-related problems for Cuddy to worry about.

House smiled fondly as he watched Wilson come out of the kitchen carrying a completely one-year-old safe cupcake with a candle stuck into it. There was beer for Cuddy and himself, but so far, he hadn’t touched his bottle. This wasn’t the sort of event that he wanted to be intoxicated for.

The child was fascinated with the candle, she always had loved to watch the dancing flames, her affinity with fire was something of a concern for Wilson and Cuddy, but House found it oddly endearing.

He just hoped that she wouldn’t set fire to anything important when she got older.

“Happy birthday, kid.” House said, plucking the cupcake out of Wilson’s hands and setting it onto the tray of her high-chair. “I challenge you with the task of making a wish and blowing out this candle.”

The slate-colored eyes of his daughter stared back at him, calm and collected. She didn’t understand quite yet, but the concept of blowing was strange for her. She looked about, confused, as Cuddy reached into her pocket and produced a tissue.

“Like this sweety,” She said, showing how to blow, her breath making the tissue float out of her hand and into the remains of her dinner.

The baby made a happy cooing sound and sniffed loudly in the general direction of the candle.

House found himself leaning back in his chair, his head thrown back in laughter as he tried to find the best way to immortalize this moment for future blackmail.

The candle went out three tries later and everyone clapped, proud of what they’d achieved.

  


x

  


  
_o3. “M. de Treville had employed this powerful machine for the king in the first place, and the friends of the king – and then for himself and his own friends.”_  
Wilson pretended not to notice when House sat with their daughter in his lap at the piano, showing her the keys. House was methodical in his teaching method, carefully instructing only in the sequence that would actually play a tune, never in scales or something equally awful on the ear. There was a peace that came over House when he played the piano, a peace that they all struggled to retain in their hectic lives.

Wilson would lean against the back of the piano and watch as House played; all three of them lost in their own little world. He liked it in that world, where he didn’t have to worry about all of the awful things that came with having a two-year-old in the house.

He had stuck House with the task of toilet-training the child, and he had resolved to work on helping her to begin learning how to talk. Her first steps had been a few months after her first birthday and suddenly nothing in the house was safe – they’d spent a harried few days trying to figure out where to put all of the nicknacks that House had collected over the years so that they wouldn’t get ruined by young hands so new to the idea of touching the unknown.

House got up from the piano and set his charge onto the floor, and she sped off in the direction of Wilson, wrapping her arms around his legs and grinning up at him. “Are you done for the night?” Wilson asked her as he picked her up and gave her the hug that she’d been vying for ever since her father let her go.

“I don’t know if I could take much more.” House lamented, pulling the cover down over the piano’s keys. “Her playing hurts my ears.”

Wilson smiled, “We can’t all be as good as you, can we?”

House shook his head, “I’d have no one to mock.” And it’s true, too, because House needs to be smarter than people to keep his edge on the constant boredom that creeps up on him when he’s least expecting it. “And then I’d be stuck being _nice_ to people.”

Wilson nodded, “We can’t have that.”

  


x

  


  
_o4. “He told me that he should henceforth recruit his musketeers from among the guards of the cardinal.”_  
Robert Chase was used to coming into work and finding House with a sleeping toddler in his lap. He painted a funny picture, trying to work around her small body on whatever case they had at the time. The shock of House as a father had worn off a long time ago, and now Chase was just glad that somehow, that small bundle of energy had managed to tame House.

Okay, perhaps tame wasn’t the best word for it, but there was definitely some marked improvement from what House had been like before.

Foreman had moved on to take a position at Mercy General in New York a few months ago, and Chase had gotten a promotion to a now permanent member of the diagnostics staff. He was proud that he’d earned the chance to stay; but House told him that he simply needed someone else that he trusted not to kill the patient to be on the staff in case he couldn’t come into work. It had seemed like a good idea at the time.

Truth be told, Chase had never actually spoken to the child, he had only seen her from afar, and had tried his best to look professional. A child of his two bosses had something of a terrifying gene pool to begin with, and Chase wasn’t sure he wanted to see just how early Cuddy and House’s more negative traits set in.

Today, however, the child was awake and it was House that was asleep, passed out with a book in his lap.

Chase moved across the conference room as quietly as he could and opened the door, gesturing for the little girl to follow him. She did so with cautious eyes.

“We should let your daddy sleep,” Chase explained as he set her up at the conference table with some markers and paper.

“You talk funny,” The girl pointed out. She raised her hands up in the air, gesturing as she continued, “Are you one of those fop-people that daddy talks about?”

Fop people? Chase had no idea what she was talking about, but ‘foppish’ did define House’s views about his father’s family and his privileged upbringing. House was known for recruiting people from old medical families for his fellowship, and Chase had to admit that he fit the bill pretty well.

He hated to think about the old medical genes that were flowing through this child. The thought alone was terrifying.

  


x

  


  
_o5. “You are an honest youth; but, at the present moment, I can only do for you that which I just now offered.”_  
House and Wilson sat on the couch, a pile of brochures on the coffee table between them. It was almost too overwhelming to think about this sort of thing, after all, she was still just a baby.

“I can’t believe that these people have their heads so far up their asses that they make a four year old apply for something like this.” House muttered, throwing another brochure down on the table in disgust, “That one even goes so far as to ask for an in-person interview.”

Wilson shrugged, and crossed another item off of the list in his lap. “Its preschool House, we want her in the best possible environment.”

“I didn’t go to preschool.” House retorted, “And _I_ turned out fine.”

“I think that’s up to some interpretation.” Wilson pointed out, leaning against House’s shoulder as he did so. There was something about these quiet moments once the kid was in bed, they both lived for them – for it was in silence that their bond was strengthened. “Besides, we need her to be somewhere during the day, you and I both know that she can’t run wild around the hospital. She’ll get sick…”

“Or Cameron will steal her and we’ll never see her again.” House added.

“My god, Cuddy’d kill us if that happened.” Wilson sounded awed by the possibility, but it was a very real threat if anything ever happened to their daughter. A very real threat indeed.

“But look on the bright side, Jimmy, we’d never have to worry about stepping on legos or poorly matched outfits ever again.”

“And you say that I’m the shallow one.”

“At least I don’t blow dry my hair.”

  


x

  


_o6. “D’Artagnan was not acquainted with anyone in Paris.”_  
When it came time to fill out their daughter’s forms for kindergarten, Wilson cleverly left them on Cuddy’s desk because he didn’t to attach a note explaining that no; their daughter’s name wasn’t Wyatt.

That was just what House called her.

In the process of naming their child all those years ago, Wilson had talked House into letting Cuddy name her. It had seemed like the nice thing to do, since this was an arrangement between the three of them left Cuddy at a disadvantage in terms of future influence over her daughter. Being the one to name her seemed to compensate for that, a little.

Cuddy had named her Ruth. Wilson called her Ruthie when he was feeling affectionate, and Ruth the rest of the time when she was acting a little too much like House for his comfort.

House called her Wyatt.

Wilson supposed that the name did have some credit to it, for it was Ruth’s middle name; but there was something downright weird about hearing a child called that. The name sounded like some bizarre Australian mammal that only Chase should be able to identify, not like a nickname for a five year old girl who liked to run around in bright pink shirts and blindingly yellow pants whenever she was mad at her parents.

Wilson never really understood Ruth's motives for that outfit, but it was one of the more painful things he'd ever seen in his life. All attempts to remove those two articles of clothing from his daughter's posession, however, were thwarted by temper tantrums the likes of which he'd never seen before.

Anyone who had made Ruth’s acquaintance knew that she was a special girl – bright and ambitious like her parents, but she did in everything in a laid-back manner reminiscent of Wilson. There were two faces to the girl that came and went without so much as the blink of an eye, and Wilson never knew which side he was addressing until it was almost too late.

So with Wyatt reduced to a simple ‘W’ next to the box marked middle initial, Ruth W. House was off to kindergarten and into the world of academic learning that so much fascinated her.

Wilson was pretty sure that he’d yet to have a prouder moment in his life as he watched his daughter skip into the school yard as he stood by the car.

 

  


x

  


_o7. “D’Artagnan and Cahusac sprang forward at the same instant, the one to recover, the other to obtain, the sword; but D’Artagnan being the more active reached it first, and placed his foot upon it.”_  
Ruth sometimes got into fights with House over when she went to bed, what she wore in the morning and the fact that House was a miserable son-of-a-bitch who really should be nicer to people.

Wilson watched the fights with the fondness of a father, but he couldn’t help feeling a little left out. He’d told House about these feelings on several occasions, late at night, after the Holy Terror was finally asleep and they got a moment to themselves.

House always kissed him and made him forget about all of his problems - their problems. There was nothing that he should be worried about, but as their daughter moved into her sixth year, there was something that made Wilson want to have everything completely taken care of and squared away between himself and House.

And between the two of them, there was a lot of dirty laundry that needed airing.

“Let’s play a game.” Wilson said one evening after they’d gotten Ruth to bed with only two chapters of Treasure Island under her belt. With her usual quota being around three and half, this was something of an accomplishment and Wilson was quite proud of House for managing to cut it off after only two. “We each confess something to each other that we’ve never told anyone before.”

“I dunno, Jimmy, it sounds kinda gay.” House grinned.

Wilson glared at him, folding his arms across his chest with all the defiance and challenge of a drawn sword.

“Fine. I confess that sometimes I look at Wyatt and wonder if you switched sperm samples.” House said, leaning against the doorway into the kitchen. “She looks so much like you; and she acts like you do most of the time.”

“That’s because she isn’t insane like you. She’s a normal, healthy, well-adjusted girl who doesn’t know any better than to think you’re something of an anomaly.”

“I don’t like anomalies, they bug me.”

“My point exactly.” Wilson continued; intrigued by the fact that House was going along with this. He took a deep breath and stated his own confession, “When Cuddy first asked you to do this, I thought that you were going to leave me.”

House looked hurt, and he crossed the room and wrapped an arm around Wilson’s shoulder in what he hoped would be a comforting gesture. “You know that I would never do that do you.”

Sometimes Wilson had to confess that he wondered if House would. Just like he wondered if one weekend Ruth won’t come home from Cuddy’s – the separation being too much for Lisa to take. It was a passing fear, but one that resonated in his mind when he gave it too much thought.

But for now, they were good. Ruth had some of her mother in her, and a whole lot of her fathers. It was a nice combination.

  


x

  


  
_o8. “As usual, this hotel was full of soldiers of this corps, who hastened to the assistance of their comrades…”_  
“I wanna go to the beach!” Ruth announced one morning in early August after House had tried unsuccessfully for the third time to bury himself under his pillow and go back to sleep. Having children had altered the way that he processed almost every aspect of his life, and while he was the first to praise the change, he really wished that kids came with an ‘off’ button or at least a ‘snooze.’

“’s five in the morning kid, m’sleepy.” He muttered into the pillow as Ruth pulled insistently on his elbow, the one part of his body that was still above the covers.

“Just because Daddy’s not here doesn’t mean that you get to be a grump.” Ruth retorted angrily, pulling more insistently.

House reasoned that he had about three minutes before Ruth wised up and pulled the covers off of him. The kid was seven years old, but somehow, the idea of her being that mean just didn’t sit right in his head.

It must be the absence of Wilson.

Wilson was stuck back at the hospital, dealing with the crisis of some rich and influential member of society. It was a cancer scare, nothing to be worried about, but Cuddy had been forced to make Wilson stay in attending to make sure that the potential donor didn’t die on them – effectively cutting short their vacation as a family.

House had had some words with Cuddy after that, but Ruth had pointed out that helping people was what doctors did.

When did that kid get to be so smart? House wondered this every time she spouted off sage advice – but he always chalked it up with Wilson telling her those old Yiddish sayings that his grandmother had taught him before she died. Those sayings could rule a person’s life, but they provided Ruth with a solid basis of what was right and wrong in the world – complete with House’s own cynical outlook. He rather liked them.

“Fine.” He grumbled, pulling the pillow off of his head and looking bleary-eyed at Ruth as she bounced out of the room.

The kid already had her swimsuit on. House fell back onto the pillow and sighed. Today was going to be a very long day.

  


x

  


_o9. “Come here, sir.”_  
The teacher stood in the middle of the classroom, parents filling the space as was considered a normal turnout for the elementary school’s visiting night. She saw people that she’d met before, the struggling parents of troublesome students and men and women that she’d never laid eyes on in her life – which in itself was odd, considering the fact that she’d thought she’d met all of the parents of her students during the previous month’s parent-teacher conferences.

She gave a short talk about how things went in the past few weeks of lessons, and then turned the parents loose to explore the classroom and talk to each other.

She approached the other man who was standing with Doctor House, the man who’d attended Ruth House’s parent-teacher conference and held out her hand. “I’m Gweneth Moss,” she said by way of introduction. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

The man smiled a real lady-killer’s smile, and took her hand politely. “James Wilson. I live with Doctor House.”

Ms. Moss felt her hand struggle with the want to cover her mouth, but she kept it in check and at her side. She had _no_ idea that Doctor House was _that_ way – he’d seemed so normal when they’d met. A bit abrasive, perhaps, but perfectly normal.

James Wilson’s eyes narrowed, “Is there a problem, Miss Moss?” There was an undercut of anger in his voice, as though he was already throwing up shields to protect himself and his family. If Ms. Moss was lucky, she’d have about a week before Ruth was transferred out of her class.

She didn’t want that, because Ruth was such a pleasure to have in class, so she swallowed her shock and shook her head, “No, it’s not that sir, I was just taken a little aback.”

James Wilson smiled knowingly, “Ah, I see. House is like that, he’s good at hiding things.”

“You’re not so bad yourself.” Ms. Moss responded, “But you wear it on your sleeve better than he does.”

James Wilson nodded sagely and turned to go back to his partner – leaving Ms. Moss alone to contemplate just what it would mean to be a third grader and not know what was so abnormal about her family.

There was something in the way that Doctor House greeted James Wilson with an arm around his shoulders and a happy smile at what she guessed to be another parent who worked at the same hospital as him. That something told her that the kid would be alright and that she had a family that could explain what was going on to her before it became an issue.

At least she hoped so, anyway.

  


x

  


  
_o1o. “At other times he would return home and write a treatise, and request his friends to not disturb him.”_  
Ruth never really had good friend until the forth grade. In some ways this was both a blessing and a curse for House and Wilson, for it saved them the awkwardness of explaining why Ruth had two daddies and no mommy living at home.

“Daddy?” Ruth asked one morning as she pushed her cereal around in her bowl.

“Mmm?” House responded, not looking up from the cup of coffee he was nursing.

“Can Hana come over on Friday night for a sleepover?” Ruth had been to a slumber party a few weeks before and was fascinated with them. She’d been trying to find an excuse to have someone sleep over ever since.

“Depends on if I’ve got work.” House reasoned, “Why don’t you get her mom’s phone number for me and I’ll call her.” More appropriately, he’d make Wilson call her. “But you should ask Jimmy, he’d have a better idea of what’s going on Friday night.”

“Okay!” Ruth said, tipping her bowl upwards and drinking as much of the milk as she could in a few noisy slurps. She left her bowl in the sink and wandered off into the living room to get her shoes on for school.

“I dunno about this,” Wilson said, sticking his head around the door into the small room where the washer and dryer were situated. “I mean, we’re not exactly _out_ any place other than work.”

“The kid wants a friend to sleep over. Where’s the harm in that?” House shook his head. “If worst comes to worst, you can sleep on the couch to put up the appearance of the poor friend whose wife just dumped him.”

“I am not sleeping on that couch.” Wilson retorted, “Never again.”

House chuckled, “Fine then, we’ll think of something.”

The problem was that they didn’t. Or rather, House got himself a case on Wednesday afternoon, right after Wilson called Hana’s mom to make the arrangements for the overnight. So when House arrived home on Friday night after spending close to forty-eight straight hours in the presence of Chase, Cameron and the new guy; all he wanted to do was pass out on the couch.

Hana’s mom watched from the kitchen as Ruth came racing out of her bedroom with a happy cry of ‘Daddy!’ She hadn’t been expecting this man, unshaven and looking dead tired, to be the chaperone for the night. He looked like a dead man walking – not like a responsible adult.

“What was it in the end?” Wilson called from the kitchen, taking the water he was boiling and pouring it into the waiting tea cups on the counter.

“Peanut allergy.” House grinned sleepily. “Kid’d been eating them his entire life and had been having a minor allergic reaction to them all along. Mom thought the rash was eczema and so did the dermatologist she took him to – it was only when the unexplained anaphylaxis happened out of the blue that she thought to bring him to a _intelligent_ doctor.”

He stood up in a laborious movement and smiled at Hana’s mom, who was looking quite horrified. “I’m Greg House. I take it that you’re the mother of Wyatt’s next victim?”

“I’m Hana’s mom, yes.” The woman looked very uncomfortable all of a sudden, and she looked from Wilson to House and back again as she tried to decipher exactly what was going on.

“Well, it’s an honor to meet you. I’m going to take some Ambien and go to bed.” House turned on his heel and headed out of the room, a knowing grin on his face.

“He’s been up the better part of two days, cut him some slack.”

Hana’s mom nodded, understanding dawning on her. This man, Doctor Wilson, must be a fall back in case Ruth’s dad had to work or something. That must be it.

  


x

  


  
_o11. “Without doubt.”_  
The end of Ruth’s fifth grade year meant a graduation ceremony and Ruth being asked to make a speech. As one of the members of the small student council that the teachers encouraged their fifth graders to form; Ruth was on the short-list for being selected.

She wrote it on her own, refusing help from both her mother and her two fathers. This was to be her own accomplishment, so when she took the middle of the stage at the beginning of the ceremony, no one knew exactly what she was going to say.

“My name is Ruth.” She began simply, “I’m a member of the student council here and I’ve been asked to give a speech about fifth grade, and finally growing up.”

“Growing up isn’t really what we’re doing, however. We’re going to a scary place where everyone is driven by rapidly developing hormones and no one knows which way is up; we’re moving into the cutthroat world or cliques, the world our parents try to deny exists.

“My dad is a doctor. So’s my mom, so’s Jimmy. They’re used to dealing with stupid people on a daily basis; but we’re not. We’re still in elementary school; we have no idea what it’s like in the bigger fish tank. No idea how morons there are out there.

“I challenge my fellow fifth graders to try and rise above what middle school is going to do to us. We’re all friends now, but give us two months at a middle school and we’ll all hate each other. I don’t want that to happen, I don’t want to lose my friends.

“I know that I will try, without doubt, to keep us together, and I charge the rest of you to do the same. The times, they’re a’changing, and we have to not let them change for the worse.”

Ruth stood in the middle of a stage without a clue as to what the weight of what she had just said meant. She had simply wanted to point out something that she’d observed, but had asked her classmates to try and be civil to one another even when the environment demanded otherwise.

She stood before her classmates and their parents, her eyes searching out into the audience; mystified as to why tears were running down her father’s face.

The applause was astounding.

END


	2. The Logic of a Child

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A series of snapshots from Ruth Wyatt House’s childhood and teenage years. In the same universe as A’changin’.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: It’s when they hit fifteen that they become Mary-Sues, non? Eh, I wanted to write more about Ruth, so I did this. The title ripped off of an ‘I Am Kloot’ song, called ‘The Logic of a Friend’.
> 
> A new drabble meme! It’s called the ‘descriptor challenge.’ The basic premise is to follow the details about a person. The traits that define them, what they like, where they work; basically the stuff that the DMV demands to know when you go apply for a license or register to vote. Combine these descriptors into a series drabbles. Before you say anything else, I know that this is vague, look at the prompts that I used:  
> Name, eyes, hair, religion, language, music.

o1. Name – First and Middle  
What meaning a name carries is usually summarized completely by how the person who bears that name chooses to act. There is no way to predict if a name will fit when your child is a eleven-or-so pound bundle of barely functional flesh and muscle. And still, naming a baby is one of the most complex and emotionally challenging tasks a new mother is faced with.

Oddly enough House had no trouble dreaming up names for their child and bouncing them off both Cuddy and Wilson whenever they seemed to need some cheering up. They didn’t know the gender of the child, but when House decided that if they had a girl, they’d name her something lewd just for kicks, Wilson finally pulled the plug on House’s naming rights. It simply wasn’t fair to the child, naming them something that would make them the butt of jokes their entire lifetime.

House agreed with Wilson, but he’d never say it to his face. There were some battles that you simply didn’t fight, and this, as it turned out, was one of them.

Cuddy eventually decided on a name for their child; Ruth, after her father’s mother. Grandmere Ruth was one of the few women in Cuddy’s family that wasn’t Jewish – and yet one of the only women with a biblical name. At ninety-three and raving mad, Ruth was one of the few people in Cuddy’s family that didn’t constantly pressure her to produce children, or to settle down and get married. Instead, Grandmere Ruth was all for Cuddy to keep working at the rate she was working; and hoped that her granddaughter would become famous before she passed away.

“Why Ruth?” House demanded, cradling the infant in his arms. He frowned and held the baby up closer to his face, “She doesn’t look like a Ruth, she looks like a Wyatt.”

Wilson sighed; he was overtired, exasperated, and annoyed that House was insisting on adding ‘Wyatt’ to the child’s birth certificate. “Wyatt is a boy’s name, House.” He pointed out.

Cuddy sank back into the pillows on the birthing bed. They’d changed the sheets and now all she wanted to do was go to sleep for the next year or so. House could look after the baby, she hoped; and Wilson would keep him in line. “House, Wilson?” She asked, her eyes closed. “Give me my child, I’m going to sleep; you can rename her in the morning.”

-

o2. Eyes  
Wilson often, during the first few years of Ruth’s life, wished that Ruth had gotten House’s eyes. It was a selfish wish, but one that he thought carried much merit, considering how beautiful they would have looked with Ruth’s complexion.

But over time, he grew to realize that it was a good thing that Ruth didn’t have House’s eyes. House’s eyes were one of a kind, and Wilson didn’t want to think that he was the only person hung-up on them; he wasn’t much for competition, even if the eyes were attached to another person. Ruth had her own piercing stares and sparkles of happiness, reflected perfectly through the gentle grey that she’d apparently gotten from either Cuddy’s father or House’s mother – the jury was still out on that decision.

When Ruth turned fifteen, Cuddy took her to Macy’s in New York to get some new clothes and look for a birthday present for House, since his birthday was coming up in a few weeks and Ruth had wanted to get him something from the big city.

Cuddy wasn’t quite sure how she should react when Ruth asked to go look at the make-up section of the store. Ruth had never been interested in that sort of thing before, and Cuddy had a very distinct feeling that Wilson would have a minor panic attack at the concept of his little girl wearing make-up.

She would have said no, but Ruth had asked very nicely and in such a nonchalant way that it almost seemed worth it to indulge her whim. After a few minutes with an unskilled salesperson that seemed to think that with Ruth’s complexion, pink was the best color for her – Cuddy finally had to put her food down.

“This is insane.” She said, taking Ruth’s hand and heading towards the rest rooms – fully intent on washing off the god-awful make-up job before Ruth managed to take a picture of herself and send it to her father. “You look like some sort of exotic bird, or maybe a drag queen.”

“Oh?” Ruth asked, looking at herself in the mirror, “I think it works with my eyes.”

Cuddy shook her head, wetting a paper towel and carefully scrubbing around her daughter’s eyes – “Trust me on this one, it’s damn hard to find good make-up with eyes like yours.”

“But mom!” Ruth protested, trying to squirm away from Cuddy. She sounded so much like House that Cuddy paused, paper towel still dripping in hand, and laughed out loud.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get you completely dolled up one day and then send you home to James – but we’ll make sure you’re legal before we do that.” Cuddy explained, continuing to wipe off the make-up. “Because I’ve a feeling that James would ban me from seeing you ever again.”

Ruth shrugs, “But why would Jimmy do that?”

“You’re still his baby girl, you always will be.”

-

o3. Hair  
House was sitting with Ruth in his lap, a hairbrush in one hand, and a bit of ribbon in the other. He had absolutely no idea what he was doing – or how he should go about doing it. Wilson had simply handed him the tools and told him to go and complete the task while he packed up Ruth’s lunch.

And so, armed with a hairbrush, House had been sent to tame the wild mass of dark curls that grew on top of his daughter’s head with seeming disregard for gravity and all other laws of nature.

“Okay kid, I have no idea what I’m doing.” House admitted, running the brush through Ruth’s hair. “You gotta tell me what to do.”

Ruth blinked and flinched with House pulled the bush too quickly through the thick mane of curls that she liked to call ‘hair.’ “Don’t put the ribbon in, Daddy.” She suggested after a few moments of thought.

“Jimmy said I had to, Wyatt, I can’t just ignore what he says. I do that enough and he won’t be nice to me if I do it any more than I have to.” House explained, pulling Ruth’s hair back into something that resembled a pony-tail and tying it off with the hair tie that she offered him.

This was something of a practiced art for the both of them, a simple reaction in response to an action. Cuddy had told him horror stories during the ‘terrible twos’ about her own childhood, and House, in turn, had told Wilson all sorts of stories about his own childhood to make the concept of this monster they were raising all the more horrifying. They tried, on purpose; it seemed, to work each other up into a frenzy over what Ruth’s future would hold for them.

So far, Ruth had defied their expectations, she was quiet when she needed to be, and loud when she felt like it – but never out of turn. Wilson, it seemed, was a good influence on her.

“Why would Jimmy be mad at you? He loves you like he loves me.” Ruth pointed out.

“Being mad isn’t the same as being not nice.” House explained, tying the bow into Ruth’s hair as best as he could. It was lopsided and didn’t stick up like it did when Wilson did it. He scowled at it and prodded it with a finger, trying to get it to stick up a little more. “It just means that Daddy doesn’t get certain _things_ that he likes from Jimmy.”

“He doesn’t give you ice cream after dinner?” Ruth asked.

“Something like that.” House agreed, pushing Ruth off of his lap, “Go get your shoes on, kid, we gotta take you to school.”

-

o4. Religion  
Ruth was born in mid-March, when the snow was starting to melt and everyone who lived north of the New Jersey state line was experiencing mud season. It was nice to have a birthday in the beginning of the year, House decided, because there wasn’t enough cheer in the first few months of the year. And certainly not enough consumerist holidays that he could indulge himself and Ruth in.

Wilson wouldn’t do Easter, and House refused to do Passover, so they ignore the holidays that usually fell in April all together. Ruth still grew up eating jellybeans and malt eggs like the rest of her classmates, but the Easter Bunny never came to their house. There was no reason for him to come.

House hated the fact that he’d somehow been drafted into helping raise a morally educated child. Ruth was fine on her own, she didn’t need the church to save her; but the biggest fight that House had ever had with Wilson was over Ruth’s ‘spiritual upbringing.’ Since Cuddy was Jewish, Ruth was as well, and Wilson intended to raise her as such.

Normally, House would have been perfectly fine with that, but suddenly there was this presence influencing Ruth’s life that he had no direct control over. Faith was stupid, House had always argued that fact, and intelligent people didn’t need it to get ahead in life.

The problem was that Ruth seemed to like the occasional Friday night at temple. House could not understand how someone so young and so honest couldn’t see the blatant corruption of the truth as taught by the Abrahamic faiths.

House cornered Wilson after one of these Friday nights and demanded to know why Ruth liked it so much.

“I’d expect it has something to do with the snacks she gets after services.” Wilson speculated. House knew that Wilson had never been a practicing Jew, at least, not as much as his mother had wanted him to be. It was just strange to think that with Ruth in the picture; Wilson suddenly had found his faith again.

“That must be it.” House agreed, sitting down next to Wilson on the couch. “I don’t think I want her going any more.” He said seriously, “We can let her read the stories, but what can religion teach her that we don’t already teach her?”

Wilson frowned, “House,” He started, as if he was struggling to find the words to use, “It’s important for kids to have religion as they grow up, it helps them to question it later in life.”

“That’s kind of backwards logic.” House muttered, frowning.

“Trust me, it really helps.” Wilson explained. They’d been through this conversation so many times already that House was shocked that they hadn’t started yelling yet. Usually, Wilson would put his foot down and say that Ruth needed this, that being that. House decided to let the discourse continue, for Wilson had never made this point before.

“I was talking to one of the older members of the temple, and he was telling me that he and his wife had this exact same fight fairly regularly until their kids got old enough to make their own decisions about the faith.” Wilson continued, “He said that it’s best to just let what happens happen – the kid’ll be fine, no matter what.”

“At least you and Cuddy aren’t Evangelical Christians.” House lamented, “Because then I guarantee you that Wyatt would never step foot in a church again, except, maybe, on her wedding day.”

“As far as I know, the Jewish faith is not going to turn your child against you, House.” Wilson grinned.

“Good.”

-

o5. Language  
It turned out that Ruth did not have her father’s gift with languages. Rather, she had Cuddy’s distain for them. In the seventh grade, Ruth was assigned to take Spanish classes along with half of her grade. It was either that or French, and Ruth reasoned that because her father got Spanish medical journals that she’d at least be able to get help.

Apparently, Wilson’s ability to speak Canadian French with relative ease was completely lost on her, since most of Canada spoke better English than the Americans. The idea of people in Canada speaking another language other than English was simply something that Ruth could not get her head around, no matter how many times Wilson took her up to Quebec with him to visit friends or his brother and his family.

Wilson watched her from the kitchen as she sat on the couch, a large textbook on her knees and a pile of note cards waiting to be turned into flash cards on the table by her foot. Language was a frustrating thing for Ruth, because she knew that she _should_ be able to get it – but she simply couldn’t.

She looked up and spotted Wilson watching her, and called, “Jimmy, can you help me with these?”

Wilson had had things that he needed to do. Like keeping an eye on dinner, and calling either Chase or Cameron to make sure that House would be home on time – for once; but there was something about the way that Ruth asked him to do things that made her damn near impossible to refuse.

“Sure, Ruthie, what do you need?” He asked, sitting down next to her and pulling to book closer so that he could try and figure out what she was supposed to do.

Ruth pouted and pointed to the exercises she was supposed to be doing. “We’re supposed to practice making these verbs here past tense, and then taking the verbs here and putting them into the present tense.”

Wilson smiled knowingly; verb tenses weren’t something that he really liked either. When he was still in Quebec, he’d found it easier to speak only in the present or subjunctive tenses – since French was fairly easy to understand in those tenses. “Where do I come in then?”

“You check my work.”

“Shouldn’t you wait for Greg?” Wilson asked, “I mean, I can try, but I don’t have any background with the language. Your dad’s a better bet for the right answers.”

Ruth frowned, her lip pouting out a bit as she did so. She knew that Wilson could not refuse that look, “But Dad’s mean to me when I make mistakes.”

Wilson placed a hand on her shoulder, smiling as he did so. “That’s just his way of showing that he wants you to be right. He hates it when people make stupid mistakes because he knows that they could be easily prevented. You should hear him go off on Chase sometime.” He squeezed her shoulder, “He loves you, and he just shows it oddly sometimes.”

“Really?”

“Really really.”

-

o6. Music  
Ruth’s taste in music was an evolving demon. When she was an impossibly small baby, the only way that House could get her to go to sleep was to play Frank Zappa and let her sleep on his chest, listening to the smooth sounds of Zappa’s voice and the steady beat of House’s heart. House liked those months, where he could pass out with a warm weight on his chest and just be content to sit there while the rest of the world passed them by.

But soon Frank Zappa turned into artists that House had never heard of. Wilson’s corrupting influence had gotten Ruth listening to Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dike like they were the best thing since The Beatles. Show tunes, it seemed, were a great way to get the three-year-old Ruth to go to sleep.

“Jimmy, how can you listen to that crap?” House demanded as yet another round of ‘My Favorite Things’ had driven him to nearly leaving the apartment for fear of breaking something valuable.

“These are some of the most talented singers of all time, House.” Wilson explained, carefully putting the CD back into its case and closing the CD load tray once again.

“The greatest artists? What about Mick Jagger, Miles Davis, you know, the _real_ musicians?” House demanded, pulling the CD case out of Wilson’s hands. “You’ve got her listening to _The Best of Broadway_. I can’t help but think that that’s bad for her development.”

“It’s as good for her development as your music, it’s just a little calmer so that she can go to sleep at a reasonable hour.” Wilson scowled and snatched his CD back. “Besides, as good as the Rolling Stones are, do you really want her listening to those lyrics and growing up believing them?”

“I think it’s important to know that you can’t always get what you want in life.” House protested.

“That line didn’t work on Cuddy, it won’t work on me.” Wilson retorted.

“Fine, but cut back on the big happy gayness of your musicals, okay?” House asked, trying to look like he was actually asking Wilson to do this for him.

Wilson raised an eyebrow, “I thought you liked the big happy gayness.” Setting the CD case down, he trailed a finger along the collar of House’s t-shirt.

House swallowed, and then realized why it was that he always lost this argument.

Wilson was very good at getting what he wanted.


End file.
